I was very sad to read of a recent survey that said only 40 per cent of parents thought it was their responsibility to teach their children about personal finance.

The other 60 per cent wanted, of course, to push the responsibility on to teachers, because at least half of parents felt that their own financial position would have been better if they had been taught about personal finance at school.

When I was young, before the days of easily available credit cards or even before the advent of hire purchase, there was just one rule of personal finance: if you hadn't got the money to pay for it, then you didn't have it. You saved up for it, or you went without.

Now we have legions of people clutching fistfuls of credit cards and spending a small fortune without any real money changing hands, fuelled by the new philosophy: if I want it, I've got to have it.

As a result, we have people demanding that someone else helps their offspring to cope because, with their track record, they can't help them themselves. Is it not the role of schools to fill a wider educational role of civilising, giving culture and a broad education?

Is it really acceptable that huge swathes of the population, even the so-called "educated" ones, have never been to an art gallery and seen a famous painting; never been to a theatre except to a pop concert or a pantomime?

We have to stop seeing schools as just places where things that were once taught by parents are dealt with in such detail that there is no longer room for the more civilising of subjects and influences. Why not keep our school subjects and just tell parents and children to resist the blandishments of the credit card companies and retailers and realise the true meaning of "live now, pay later".

Ought we not, as a society as a whole, try to counteract the "culture" that tells us that without a veritable army of the latest gadgets we are not doomed to be social pariahs and pitifully inferior beings?

If parents in their thousands fall for such propaganda, what chance have their children got, all dolled up in their designer clothes, interminably texting on their latest mobile phone, and totally obsessed with shopping?